Is Hydroseeding Enough?

Mike
Werner, mayor of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, says that the city recently
received grant funding to hydroseed areas in both the city and nearby
national park that were burned by this winter’s fire. The fire was
intense, and it’s hoped that hydroseeding will prevent landslides and
mudslides.

Gatlinburg
resident Erik Cooper owned a risk management and insurance business for
more than two decades, and he isn’t sure that the root system from
hydroseeding will be enough. Cooper hopes the hydroseeding contract will
cover the tops of burned slopes, not just the bottom of the mountain
and along the roads. “If everything above breaks loose and slides down,
it’s going to erode the hydroseeded area below, and push it right into
the road,” he said.

NASA Aids in Spill Survey

NASA
teamed up with the US Geological Survey to show the continuing effects
of the deepwater Horizon oil spill. By looking at data over the past few
years, as well as the years before the spill, they were able to
determine that the Barataria Bay shoreline is receding at more than 13
feet a year.

The
spill, which coated the shoreline of Barataria Bay, occurred in 2010,
and, in 2012, already aggressive erosion was worsened by Hurricane
Isaac. Finally, though, researchers were able to get an erosion-rate
baseline this year, since there were no major storm events.

“Being
able to compare shoreline losses in a year without any major storm to
losses both after the deepwater Horizon oil spill and after the
hurricane was essential to correlating the erosion of the marsh to its
underlying causes,” one researcher said.

In many ways, we are fortunate that, in our chosen profession, we are able to help people when certain disasters occur: the tornadoes in Missouri, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Georgia, the flooding in Louisiana, the snows in the northeastern part of the country, the rain in California, and the snow in Colorado....

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